Sunday 24 January 2010

Mr Bigglesworth and Mr Burns

Hi, well, what can I say?
Mr Bigglesworth has gone and Mrs Dog is devastated.
Twin 1 has decided she doesn't want to be a boy actually. Good that we save on gender realignment surgery, bad that I have bought her two blue tops, a green top, a pair of blue jeans and a pair of jeans shorts - none of which she now wants to wear (might have to turn into strict mum and make her).
Friday night we had another do on camp: Burn's night. What is it with the army and Burn's night? I barely even knew who Robbie Burns was (apart from a reference to him in the cult 1980s film 'the clown and the wolfman' - with cameo performance from Mel Smith and soundtrack by Big Country) until I married a soldier, and I have been to many, many Burn's nights since. It's all a bit odd, really. I mean, soldiers are not known for their appreciation of our nation's literary heritage. It's not like we have a Shakespeare night or a Dickens night or anything (maybe I should suggest a Virginia Woolf night?) or even a Wilfred Owen night - which would be a bit more understandable. We don't even have any scottish soldiers in British Gurkhas Nepal - there is one major who says she's Scottish, but she is one of those posh ones from Edinburgh and she talks a little like the Queen, so she doesn't really count. Anyhoo (ooh, my own Scottish accent creeping in there), I was asked to read a poem at Burns night. Actually Hubby said, as he was leaving for his frosty trek, that he'd said I'd be happy to read a poem and my name was already down on the list - so it's not like I had much choice. I spent a few days saying 'My girls are the creme de la creme' in my best scottish accent in readiness. Then, just the day before the event, I was told that I wasn't going to be reading a Robbie Burns poem - no, I had to make one up myself. Thanks for that, Hubby. I had to do the 'reply by the lassies', which is supposed to be a cheeky response to a 'toast to the lassies'.
Well, I did it. Had to have a few Black Labels first (this tactic worked well for the Nepali dancing last year, so i figured it would work again for the Scottish poem thing too). Luckily I was on towards the end of the night, when many a Nepali had had to struggle through reading a Burn's poem (hard enough to fathom Burns even when read with a Scottish accent - even harder with a Nepali one), and we had listened to Robbie Burns' life story, twice (and the details were a little different the second time round -did he have ten children or twelve? did he die of syphilis or blood poisoning? did we care, after our tenth shot of Black Label? Not really).
I left as soon as the Commander did (you're not allowed to leave before him - not sure what would happen if you did, maybe firing squad?), right after the meal finished, but even so I was not home until midnight. And then, for some whisky-induced reason, perhaps buoyed up by the success of my poetry, I decided it was too early to go straight to bed, and read 'The consolations of Philosophy' until the wee small hours (as a real Scottish person would say). I'm not sure what the consolations of philosphy actually are, because I was of course too bladdered to take any of it in.
I was a little fuzzy on Saturday morning.

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